#blatant speculation

[thewrongexecution]

okay so I have work in the morning and laundry to put away and will probably gotta snack somewhere in there as well so This Is of course The Perfect Time to reprise and refine the incoherent ramble I've given twice now on stream

this post will contain spoilers for P5 basegame, royal, and strikers, and some early-game spoilers for tactica. tread lightly if you still care about any of that.

let's talk Lavenza.

rewinding to her first appearance at the end of P5, two major factors immediately establish themselves that set her apart from other velvet residents:

she is as much a victim of abuse as any of the other PThieves. Yaldy's got gaslight gatekeep girlboss on lock, obviously, but the whole bisection thing is... is that physical abuse? lobotomization? some kind of violence upon the soul itself? fucked up, is what it is.

The whole squad knows she exists. Setting aside Morgana's personal connection to her, she's this weird lonely girl they found in superjail. Obviously circumstances were dire enough at the time that they couldn't, like, hang out. but like, it's implied in Strikers that Joker still hasn't explained how the velvet room works to anyone. did she never come up in conversation again? did they all just Amnesia her the moment she stepped out of frame?

the next closest velvet resident, in both narrative and thematic resonance and chronological proximity, is P4G's Marie, and they built a whole fuckin' storyline around her. so when Igor dips at the end of P5, then stayed dipped during Third Semester, leaving Lavenza to manage the velvet room all alone, well. my brain started churning. was she just. in charge now? was the space between dream and reality and mind and matter under new management?

I know you like a good overworked office lady, and that's rubbed off into my specific vision of an older lavenza in some future mainline Persona: stuck behind that blue desk, books strewn about, coffee pot hissing in the back, eyebags, frayed hair, the works. so when I heard Strikers was a genuine sequel, which still didn't seem to contain Igor? in that moment of clarity, Haru dropped to my second favorite character in the game.

hey. you know how our good friend pita wrote an extremely good fic lamenting atlus' failure to capitalize on narrative themes and character backstories in Strikers? well Let's! Talk! Lavenza!

in Strikers- the summer vacation game, deliberately intended to be a lighter-hearted power fantasy about friends having fun on a roadtrip together, Lavenza is:

sad,

a menu.

y'hear that?

that's the sound of incredible disappointment supercompressing into loathing and vitriol!

she doesn't get to hang out! with the cool people she cares about! they don't give her an Elizabeth bit where you can socialize with a weirdo disconnected from physical reality in various humorous circumstances! it's all I'm Sorry, Trickster this or I'm Amazed, Trickster that. living plot summary and walking talking UI interface, except she hardly walks talks or lives at all.

atlus, true to form, squanders yet another opportunity.

recently, someone tweeted some concept art of Tactica's leblanc. here are those images.

they were posted in this order, suggesting they were drawn in this order. the second one contains a new playable character. the first one contains Lavenza. the new playable character is called "Elle" in Japanese. Lavenza sends you a letter in the game which, on inspection, is sealed with wax stamped with a stylized "L".

did something happen between point A and B? was there a decision to replace one with the other? are there artifacts of an earlier time yet unmodified to save time and budget? Erina first shows up heavily clothed to obscure her features, but only briefly. yet, that swathed figure shows up- briefly- in the OP that plays whenever you turn on the game. was her identity meant to remain hidden for longer? would that have mattered more if her identity was different?

Lavenza has a new outfit in Tactica, featuring a leather apron and and welder's visor. she also, per Fusion Accidents in P5 and Royal, has a chainsaw. so an outfit change, a mask, and a melee weapon which all fit a certain fictional aesthetic (slasher villain). if she had a gun, she'd have everything she'd need to be a phantom thief, right? well I don't think she's been seen with a flamethrower, but it'd match the aesthetic, compliment the heavy machinery of the chainsaw, and wouldn't even be that out of place in her new forge.

do you see. do you get it. I am going insane and so I just don't! think about it! because the possibility! however faint! is not yet zero!!!

I'm going to stream all of Tactica if I can, so I might not reach confirmation for any of this for a while. I'm pretty sure she'll reunite with the Thieves proper whenever The Train rolls in? but god knows when that'll be.

oi. ATLUS. if she's not playable yet. I'm the idiot who'd shell out for that DLC. make it happen.

(playable lavenza truther voice) what do you mean erina used to be called L. what do you mean. what do you mean. wh

i have performed the 15 seconds of research required to obtain the answer. disregard previous message.

no no keep talking, bring us into your beautiful mind

[allblognamesaretakenso]

Will you continue with your defense of Antonia if Luke breaks up with her?

of course? i will continue my defense of any woman who is being bullied, harassed and slutshamed online, because as a feminist, those are my values. i don't believe any woman should be attacked without reason, just because strangers get a 'bad vibe' or find her 'annoying' or 'mean'.

lets not get it twisted. i dont support her career. im not gonna make a fan account and jump for joy at new antonia content like a jakola adjacent. i don't defend her because she's dating luke. i defend her because i will always defend women being baselessly attacked by sexist, social media freaks.

and, frankly, dont call yourself a feminist if you dont feel the same.

[scolop98]

WTF IS WRONG WITH THE STEVEN UNIVERSE MAP: Pt. 1

An Broad Overview By Your Local Ecology Nerd & Cartoon Fan

I am once again thinking about the ecological implications of the Steven Universe map

Now I didn't watch Steven Universe until after the movie came out, so I have no idea if this was major discussion point during the height of the SU fandom. If so, I haven't seen any of it. But I can't help but look at this map and think about on how the world of Steven Universe must look completely different from ours outside of Beach City.

I also don’t have the time or energy to trawl through the entirety of Steven Universe or its wiki for every single reference to wild animals/plants for reference (and the warp pads make global travel so easy that it's really hard to guess where in the world any given location actually is) so the only real "canon" constraint I'm following here is that North America should roughly resemble real life (as the alternate worldbuilding in Steven Universe is rarely noticeable in the day-to-day life of Steven and the rest of Beach City)

(not gonna touch the potential differences in human history because frankly I don't know enough world history to speculate. tbh I feel like I don't know enough bio and ecology to be able to tackle this question to the depth it deserves but oh well)

There are two main possibilities here:

SCENARIO 1: the SU!Earth was just like ours up until the Gems arrived circa 6000 years ago and started terraforming the planet. Gem Terraforming was responsible for ALL of the differences in the map—the crater in Siberia, the presumed relocation of Western Africa (and parts of Central Africa) onto South America, the separation of the Americas, etc etc.

To put this in context: 6000 years ago, most of the charismatic Pleistocene (Ice Age) megafauna are extinct, with a few exceptions (namely the woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island and the Caribbean ground sloths). Horses might not've been domesticated yet but dogs, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, cats, and chickens had. The Austronesian Expansion also hasn't happened yet, so humans haven't reached most of the Pacific Islands or Madagascar. Under this assumption, the world would've been pretty similar to ours, and we can probably assume the SU!Earth's biosphere was pretty similar to ours when the terraforming happened. My major questions/concerns are:

what the FUCK is up with Greater Afro-America. Unless the gems sterilized that half of the continent before they moved it, a lot of African wildlife are now present in South America. Who knows how this is gonna change the ecosystems—for starters, elephants will probably survive and thrive, which would radically change the South American landscape. I imagine other African wildlife without South American counterparts (gorillas and baboons come to mind) would probably survive as well. As for organisms that have African/South American counterparts, I have no idea what'll happen. Maybe lions and leopards and jaguars and pumas all find slightly different niches and coexist on the same continent. Maybe the old world vultures of West Africa will outcompete and displace the South American vultures. Perhaps none of the monitor lizards survive the exchange because they can't compete with tegus. I'm not gonna listing all the interesting African-American counterparts that would occur here because it'd take all day, but I am particularly haunted by the fact that the number of large ant-eating mammals has doubled (aardvark, giant pangolin, giant anteater, and giant armadillo) and the number of mid-sized arboreal ant-eating mammals has jumped from ~3 to 5 (anteaters vs pangolins, but treating the silky anteater as one species instead of a species complex).

The map in the screenshot doesn't show topography, which raises the question of whether smashing West Africa into South America created a mountain range in the Smash Zone, or if the Gems combined the two landmasses in way that didn't create a new mountain range (a pickup-and-drop strategy, perhaps). Regardless, I'm really concerned about South America's ecosystems. Did you know that the Amazon Rainforest is heavily dependent on windblown dust from the Sahara for nutrients? I doubt that system would remain unchanged even without a hypothetical mountain range on the eastern border of the Amazon.

North and South America are no longer connected, which is absolutely gonna fuck up the marine ecosystems. If we assume a reversal of what happened when the Isthmus of Panama first formed, the Pacific Coast of South America would warm up and the Caribbean would see a big influx of nutrients. Very real possibility that manatees would've spread to the Pacific Coast. Coldwater species on the Pacific coast like seals, sea lions, and Galapagos Penguins might've disappeared.

The removal of West Africa also leaves the Mediterranean a lot less isolated than it used to be—which will almost certainly cause a whole lot of extinctions. (Normally) the Mediterranean's only connection to the Atlantic is the Strait of Gibraltar, a tiny chokepoint that cuts it off from most of the Atlantic's business. Reconnecting the Mediterranean to Atlantic currents and tidal action will certainly fuck things up, but I frankly don't know enough about the Mediterranean to have any idea of what the specifics would look like

The massive fuck-off crater in Siberia really intrigues me because the only body of saltwater it's connected to is the Arctic, and I doubt most Arctic species would be able to colonize the warmer southern regions of what I'm calling the Siberian Sea. Without an obvious place of origin, I imagine it would be colonized by a random mix of adaptable Arctic species (like Harbor Seals and porpoises), salt-tolerant freshwater Siberian fauna (like sturgeons and Baikal Seals), and whatever saltwater species hitchhike a ride on migrating birds.

Not to mention how the crater would affect terrestrial ecosystems. The Central Asian Migratory Flyway is gonna get massively fucked up. I would not be surprised if the creation of the Siberian Sea somehow destroys the rest of the Eurasia's steppes, taiga, and tundra through the some type of large-scale disruption of climate cause-and-effects. Even if that doesn't happen, any species with a pan-Siberian distribution will be split into western and eastern populations.

What's up with the new archipelago(s) in the South Atlantic? They don't seem to line up with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, maybe they split off of West Africa when it got moved? Maybe the gems just dumped the leftovers from some other terraforming project at a different part of the planet? I genuinely have no idea what to expect here, but whatever ecosystem emerges here will probably be unusually impoverished for an island ecosystem on account of being only 6000 years old. It would probably stifle any Atlantic-Antarctic ocean currents, though

SCENARIO 2: The other explanation for this weird map is that at least some of these difference predate the Gems' terraforming efforts. This is probably a less likely explanation IMO, but it's also where the speculation gets really fun! I have no idea how and when these changes would've occurred, but we're probably working on the scale of tens millions of years at minimum, which gives plenty of time for life to adapt to these changes, so here goes!

To start, a lot of the previously addressed points are gonna have some major impacts. The Mediterranean is a lot more exposed to the Atlantic and would probably look completely different. The geographic changes to South America and Africa would probably mess up the distribution of rainforest and grassland habitats. Of particular interest to me is that the Siberian Sea would've stifled a lot of faunal and floral migrations between western Eurasia and the combined eastern Siberian/North American region, assuming it's deep enough that it doesn't periodically dry out like the Mediterranean and Bering Seas did. This would probably have massive repercussions throughout the Cenozoic—the Holarctic as we know it probably wouldn't exist without a continuous swathe of terrestrial habitat across the Northern Hemisphere. But TBH, the no-longer-called-West-Africa and Siberian Crater issues are such major changes to Earth's actual geography that I have a hard time reconciling them as anything but the result of Gem terraforming. Even aside from those, a lot of the "smaller" changes on the map (which wouldn't cause too many differences if they only changed 6000 years ago) are gonna cause some major differences if they're old enough to predate the Gems.

The new archipelago in the South Atlantic! If this is a relatively recent island chain created by an alternate version of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, its wildlife might be vaguely similar to those of other South Atlantic islands like St. Helena and Ascension Island. Rails are inevitable. Alternatively, it might've been colonized by wildlife that rafted across the sea from Africa. Monkeys, rodents, and tortoises got to South America this way, so maybe this archipelago is inhabited by giant tortoises and not-capybaras in addition to whatever flightless birds end up there. I wouldn't be surprised if the island ends up with its own ratite, since those flew to every other major Gondwanan landmass before they evolved flightlessness.

Alternatively, the new archipelago could be an old remnant of Gondwana, in which case it'll probably have a fascinating assemblage of relict taxa in addition to whatever rafts its way from Africa. Whatever reptiles or amphibians can deal with the colder climate will certainly be weird and unique. The flora will probably be roughly similar to that of Aussie/NZ/SouthAmerica (Nothofagus and such). It probably has a lot of weird metatherians and marsupials too, maybe some weirdo crocs if we're lucky. I'm imagining a fauna with predatory sparassodont-like metatherians, and a megaherbivore guild consisting of giant tortoises, ratites, big marsupials, and endemic hystricognath rodents of various sizes; maybe even monkeys! Non-therian mammals like monotremes, multituberculates, and/or gondwanatheres probably held on until the rafters arrived in the Eocene and might've included the last surviving members of their groups, but probably didn't survive to the modern day

New Guinea is a lot further away from Australia than it is in real life. In scenario A, the southern half of New Guinea was probably an unfortunate casualty of Gem Terraforming but in this timeline I'm gonna assume that the Australian Plate/greater Australian continent was just shaped differently. With the increased distance between Australia and the Southeast Asian archipelago, I doubt there'd be any substantial interchange between Asian and Australian wildlife. New Guinea would be part of the Indomalayan Realm instead of the Australasian—no cassowarries, no echidnas, and no tree-kangaroos in New Guinea. Perhaps rodents (including the "Old Endemic" Hydromyini) never make it to Australia, and their niches are instead filled by a family of possums or bandicoots.

Speaking of Australia, the Western half looks like it's isolated from the rest of the continent by sea, and will probably have a lot of unique species not found in the Eastern half. Two species of emu (western and eastern) perhaps? I don't know enough (any) Australian geography to know if Western Australia would still be mostly desert. They were probably connected during the Ice Ages, though, but if that's enough time for the SE Asian island wildlife to speciate, it's certainly enough for the Australias to do so.

The southern third of the Indian Continent is an island! This could mean that Southern India never collided with mainland Asia, but the island's proximity to mainland India makes me think it's more likely a New Guinea/Sahul situation, where the island connects to the mainland during the Ice Ages. The Western Ghats are already a biodiversity hotspot that houses a lot of relict lineages from the days of Gondwana, so if insular South India remained separate from the mainland most of the Cenozoic it probably retained even more unique wildlife.

There are a couple other minor details—the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean appears to be a single island, The Philippines are really close to Borneo, Sardinia and Corsica are once again a single island (or perhaps never disconnected)—that might just be due to the limitations of drawing a map for a kids cartoon, and thus might not reflect actual differences.

And saving best for last:

South America still isn't connected to North America! I am a big fan of South America's native Cenozoic fauna, so this is absolutely huge for me. I'm actually splitting this part off into a whole 'nother post because I have that many thoughts on the hypothetical ecosystems that would evolve on an alternate, isolated South America and I want to skim a few more papers to make sure I'm up-to-date on my understanding

[originalcrime]

2x01: “You could have my back any day.”

“Yeah. Or, you know, you could … you could have mine.”

//////

2x07: “What did you need that I didn’t give you?”

… “I needed someone to have my back!”

[mysterious-shelf]

guys i’m thinking…thinking thoughts…the promo shows a fire breaking out on the plane… and they specifically showed the hole at the back getting bigger…and tbh that hole has to be a chekhov’s gun because why even put it there in the first place…

and now i’m picturing hen, chim, eddie and tommy going rogue again, stealing a helicopter and rappelling down through the hole to put the fire out…..here’s how the airport 1975 theory can still happen 🤓

[orcelito]

Can you imagine saying this with your full chest and not realizing that this is blatant ageism?

[total-drama-brainrot]

What do you think of the Heather was kept in the game by the producers for ratings/drama theory?

What do you mean, theory? That's literally canon.

In World Tour, at least. Heather's contunied "survival" through Island is mostly happenstance and, from a meta standpoint, plot armour, but in-universe it's mostly a lot of coincidences resulting in her not being voted out from her team.

In World Tour? The only thing keeping Heather around was the fact that her team always seemed to miraculously lose when that episode's challenge was a rewards challenge.

Alejandro's sabotaging of Team Victory helped out with that a bit, but a lot of Heather's "luck" in World Tour fell solely on the shoulders of the producers wanting to keep her around. She's a conflict generator, the conflict generator, and that paired with her looks and her entertaining personality make her a "rating's jewel". Of course they want to keep her around for as long as possible, and it just so happens that Chris already established that rewards challenges won't be disclosed until after the losers were determined. Ergo, should Heather's team lose and inevitably vote her off, Chris can just claim it was a rewards challenge the whole time.

It's not just that though. There's other, smaller instances of favouritism towards Heather in World Tour that lend credence to this.

Her team got lost in the Amazon? The "zing-zings" worship her as a goddess and, oh, give her a golden tooth to replace the one Leshawna knocked out of her mouth the previous episode - convenient that they would go out of their way to "fix" Heather's appearence, it's almost as if her looks are a big part of her appeal (in-universe) and therefore the show's viewership.

Chris outright tells Alejandro that he's not allowed to have DJ join their team, but has no qualms about Heather cozying up to him throughout Newfoundland - implying he was more than happy for Heather to recruit DJ (a known strong contestant) to her side, making her elimination more unlikely.

This isn't so much a theory as it is just looking deeper at the source material itself; the dots areall there, and it takes very little effort to connect them. The producers wanted to keep Heather around because she's good for ratings and good at causing drama - the show's whole brand. In doing so enabled her antagonist-to-antihero arc against Alejandro which only generated more audience engagement (and consequently avenue) and incentivisined them to keep pulling strings to ensure she stayed on the show for as long as possible.

[justacrazylilguy]

To The Metal Gear Fandom

Okay so silly question but i see a lot of yall on here and you say all the homoerotic stuff in mgs is canon right? Especially otasune, bbkaz, bosselot. Not to sound like a hater but the first game came out in 1998. You know what age hideo Kojima was back then? 36 with a wife and kids. So what's his real purpose for making a whole game series about a buncha gay guys? That's what leads me to believe it's unintentional but idk. If he said why then lmk cause I dont get why he would? I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I've been seeing a lot of people saying it's deliberate. Anyone can answer btw my askbox is open because i Need an explanation. More in tags cause im insane.

[bugsbenefit]

anytime people reblog my hellfire s5 post i can go back to being amazed that they made TWO separate hellfire photo props and how they deliberately switched to a version that includes Dustin, Lucas, and Mike for all the wanted posters, instead of sticking to the presumably older yearbook picture we see them have at first

for reference: the hellfire club photo we get first, with Eddie and the members of his band, but also others like the people on the right who presumably graduated

and the hellfire photo we see during Jason's speech for the first time, now featuring the party, which also ends up plastered on the wanted posters in places like the gun store

like, damn, they really went out of their way to make two separate yearbook photo props and showed Jason deliberately went out of his way to find a newer photo to include all of current hellfire for his satanism speech accusing them of ritualistic murder. man did his research

and how that alone already shows how important it was to even the prop department to drag the party into the hellfire mess headfirst since they already had a photo of Eddie in hellfire Jason could have used. but no

they deliberately update to a version including the party

it's just such a fun detail to me bc it's such a background thing too. they just switch to a photo of modern day hellfire when Jason starts accusing the whole club instead of just Eddie, no big deal. with the only exception being the party being on them, since it's their first year in higschool. that change was really for them wasn't it, so fun to me

[freakwiththeknifecollection]

It's kinda laughable to me when people bring up Meg telling Jo that Dean only saw her as a little sister as like, definitive proof that's how he felt. Like demons never lie just to fuck with people

[pebbledrat]

I am like 86% sure the yaoi bit started bc aimee wanted to call scott and ran surviving longer in hole in the wall a "yaoi win"

[portraitofadumbassonfire]

I'm pretty sure Mr Pascal is gay/bi too, but for the love of God people read the room and keep it to yourself.

[darth-icky]

the people yearn for skybridger

[renthony]

Elphaba Thropp was canonically born with ambiguous genitals in the original Wicked novel, and assigned female after an inspection by the midwife. This didn't make it into the musical version, but it is very much a thing in the book.

I've seen a few "Elphie is trans-coded" posts, and as a trans intersex person, I just wanted to remind folks that she is intersex in the source material. The book's prologue includes blatant speculation about her gender from other characters, and she gets called the intersexist h-slur.

Elphaba Thropp is intersex. 💛💜💛

[drawdotstrings]

based on firefly's character story 4, it could be that the entirety of the asdana system is engulfed in the dream?

she jumped into the ocean of memoria at the periphery of asdana, with no mention of the 'real' penacony... since we were technically in the dream as soon as we arrived, I wonder if there even is a 'real' penacony, or if the whole thing is just an ocean of memoria that sucks people into the collective dream once they get close?

the people of penacony are still (yes, still) stuck in a dream.

disclaimer: i am not a theorist. i just want to present some very suspicious things i've found and speculate on some things because i am frankly going insane over this

firstly, did anyone else get deja vu when first starting the new trailblaze mission? march says the exact same things as she did in ena's dream when trying to get the trailblazer to get up. "wake up, wake up," and then "wake up! the sun's frying your butt!"

the trailblazer has the option to say that this sounds familiar in both quests. the similarities stop after this, but another thing i found weird was how the stellaron was only mentioned once by march and then, to my knowledge, never again. no more attention focused on the thing that helped cause all the disaster in penacony?

onto other things - in the new quest checking out, qingque says this:

that's exaclty how the 2.3 quest went as well. everything went smoothly, including the deciding of the future of penacony, which i personally thought was going to be much more difficult. after that, everyone just leaves in a silly unvoiced side quest. and we didn't get to say goodbye to firefly in the end. she didn't actually experience her third death either, did she? i thought her third and final death in the script would've been a bit more dramatic, at least.

after going to firefly's secret base and interacting with the railing, you get this dialogue. this is only available after completing the 2.3 trailblaze mission.

why would the writers want to point out that it's supposedly not an illusion?

on the radiant feldspar, you can listen to these two npcs talking about the astral express acquiring the airship. this npc should be very aware that they're in the dreamscape, being in penacony, right?

the whole thing with ena's dream was also covered up by the family, with the guests having no memories of it, so they aren't talking about still being in ena's dream. what was the reason for this dialogue, then?

this is from the ending cutscene for the 2.3 mission. we fixed that screen behind aventurine. so... why is it still broken?

yes, you could say that it's for the people who haven't completed the quest where it was fixed. but that quest, once upon a dreamville, is supposed to happen before this one, so it should be fixed anyways, right?

i personally don't think hoyo would overlook something like this and leave the cutscene inaccurate for a good portion of players and mess with the timeline unless there was a good reason. trying to hint that something's not right, maybe?

in an optional interaction on the radiant feldspar, welt says this:

...but that didn't happen. welt knows that jing yuan wasn't actually there, so why wouldn't he mention that at all? iirc, march, himeko, and the trailblazer don't mention anything amiss with this either, even though this is supposed to be a snapshot of the trailblazer's memory and it didn't actually happen. don't you think that's worth mentioning?

you also get these two pieces of dialogue:

both of which i find very suspicious. i tried to chalk it up to the trailblazer being paranoid after ena's dream, but they haven't expressed that anywhere else, and they're happy in these scenes. so... why would the writers put both of these here?

after interacting with these building blocks near the monitoring room in the dreamscape reverie, you get this strange dialogue:

i could be wrong, but as far as i know, from my experience and another person's, this dialogue only appears after the 2.3 update.

in this video, sparkle says this:

firstly, the answer is important. this question is repeated countless times throughout penacony's quests, and answered by multiple different important characters. second, it's also repeated countless times that in penacony, it's not just about being happy. there are so many people in the beautiful dream who are miserable, who threw their lives away to get there, who are forced to work tirelessly to try and fulfill their dreams only to get no where. both of the things she claims are untrue. it feels like they're trying to hint at something or distract us.

yes, you could chalk this up to sparkle being sparkle. but i don't know why they would put this in the official video saying goodbye to penacony if it was just that.

onto some smaller things - robin says this in the new checking out mission:

...they all woke up from their dreams already, no?

also from the aforementioned video:

why would they acknowledge that the audience isn't satisfied with the ending? they did that with qingque too, and with something March said at the end of the quest: "so even if there are parts of it that aren't really realistic nor logical, we still hope that their story gets a good ending when it comes." why would they acknowledge this three different times if the story is truly over?

it's also said that the astral express will run out of fuel in two warp jumps if we don't go on more trailblaze missions. why are we going to the xianzhou then, if we need to trailblaze to get more fuel?

one last thing. personally, the conclusion feels all too perfect. despite this, virtually nothing has changed for the people of penacony. the beautiful dream isn't any more beautiful than it was before. people are still spending all their money to get to penacony, still wasting the rest of their remaining lives away in the dreamscape, still failing to achieve their dreams after giving up everything. despite one crisis being averted, it isn't going to get any better for the people of penacony. is this really such a perfect ending?

-

there are definitely hints i'm missing, but this is what i have for now. if i find anything else, i'll put it in a reblog. also, most of these are things I've noticed myself, but I did get a few from MeganeSimp on twitter.

i know a lot of people were very happy with the ending of 2.3 - and i am too! i don't necessarily want this theory to be true, but i also can't ignore the hints that hoyo is giving us. well, i could, but they've been eating away at my brain for days now. sure, these could all be meaningless, but i don't think the writers would put all of this in for it all to mean absolutely nothing. they're hinting at something.

i am also not trying to say that everything that happened in 2.3 was fake. i believe it did all happen, just while everyone (or just the trailblazer?) was unaware that they were in a deeper layer of the dreamscape and couldn't get out.

alright, that's all. thank you for taking the time to read through this, i hope it wasn't as disjointed as it feels. also, there are admittedly many holes in this theory. if you have anything you want to point out that I've missed or that debunks this, please feel free!

[dirkxcaliborn]

the pain and suffering of trying to find genshin theorist youtubers who aren’t really annoying to watch.